


There is a Secret That He Knows (Time and Again)

by snarkyscorp



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bloodplay, Canonical Character Death, Curses, Gen, Past Abuse, general dark subject matter of a nightmarish quality, house-elf abuse, psychological turmoil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-09
Updated: 2011-08-09
Packaged: 2017-11-05 18:55:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/409877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snarkyscorp/pseuds/snarkyscorp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a secret that he knows. It is buried in the garden, beneath the pink and white posies, sinewy in the earth, a cancer spreading beneath the soil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There is a Secret That He Knows (Time and Again)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2011 [](http://nextgendarkfest.livejournal.com/profile)[**nextgendarkfest**](http://nextgendarkfest.livejournal.com/). Major thanks to my betas [](http://secretsalex.livejournal.com/profile)[**secretsalex**](http://secretsalex.livejournal.com/) and [](http://literaryspell.livejournal.com/profile)[**literaryspell**](http://literaryspell.livejournal.com/).

There is a secret that he knows. It is buried in the garden, beneath the pink and white posies, sinewy in the earth, a cancer spreading beneath the soil. As a child, he saw it once, on accident, the corpse-fingers of a stranger reaching out from the afterlife, bone-white and flecked with dirt, begging for a second chance.

As a boy, these things frightened Scorpius. He screamed for his mother, sobbed until he vomited, slept with all the candles burning for weeks, until the darkness scared him stupid, until he needed to lay in his mother's arms, cradled like a baby and rocked to sleep to get any rest. The images flew at him like daggers—corpses, dead things, rotting in their garden, creeping to the surface, crawling out of their graves, their hands reaching and groping sightlessly for him. He could imagine the cold touch, the fierce grip, the deathly scent, the terror. It always felt real, as if it had happened before, as if someone tried to bury these things more than once but they wouldn't stay put, wouldn't stay dead.

In his dreams, Scorpius sees all the horrors of the dead, their black-eyed stares, their matted hair, their broken limbs and clawing hands and skinless faces and gruesome shrieks and gaping mouths. They bite him, they swallow him, they shackle him to the floor and make him pay for the sins of his father and his father's father and so far back that not even the portraits winding up the stairs in the Manor speak their names.

There is a secret that he knows. Time and again, he seeks refuge and finds nothing to soothe.

++

Scorpius is a troubled child. Draco knows this from the start. Fresh from his mother's womb, he doesn't make a single sound. Draco grips Astoria's hand. His wife fades in and out of consciousness, her body wracked with tremors and sweat one moment and pale and still the next. Twice he thinks he has lost her to the shadows of unspoken things, and twice she returns with a gasp, panicked and calling for her child.

The Healers take their sweet time, rubbing, patting, trying to coax life into a premature baby who doesn't yet breathe or cry or move. Draco knows at once it is like the others, stillborn, dead. He does not think Astoria can summon the strength to try again, and he knows that he will not force her, despite his desire for an heir and a son. There are other ways to birth a child, women who would rip out their arms to be a part of the Malfoy name, adoption perhaps, the orphanages overflowing every day. Draco's thoughts wander until he sees the Healers give up, placing the baby on its back and talking in low whispers that Draco can read a thousand miles away.

 _Dead_ , they say. _Nothing we can do now._

_Poor thing._

Astoria is breathing heavily, lost to her fatigue, to an ache Draco cannot begin to imagine, and something fires in Draco's thoughts, some pathetic and desperate urge to do something, because this is the third one and Draco will not lose him, loves him instantly and so fully that it chokes a scream from his throat.

On impulse and adrenaline-rushed, Draco grabs the child, gives him a firm, rough shake, and watches the baby's head loll obscenely back and forth, tilted on its impossibly slim neck. He cannot stop himself. He is mad with grief, with longing, with desperation for a family before he is too old and dead and buried like his father. He will not leave the Malfoy legacy dangling, will not let his mother go into the hereafter before she has her grandson, before she sees some happiness in a family that has so long suffered.

Someone is screaming at him from far, far away. Someone tells him to stop. Someone grabs the baby. Someone pulls him back and his head slams into the wall and ropes bind him against it. Someone tells him not to move.

And then, Draco hears it. His son. _His son_ , crying, wailing. The Healers hold him up, steady his little neck, cradle him. His small fists are flailing, his legs kicking, his mouth wide open in an endless cry that wracks Draco to his core.

One Healer holds the child on his shoulder, soothing all the cries from his lungs, and Draco's son looks up at his father with wide, crystal-blue eyes, all the innocence of childhood locked in his stare.

Draco falls in love. He sobs. The Healers remove the ropes that bind him as they lay his son in Astoria's arms. Astoria is crying too, her bright eyes dulled from the potions and pain but so ethereal, so instantly maternal. The boy, his beautiful son, looks at her with all the love and adoration of that connection that Draco will never know or understand. His son is silent as Astoria touches his small mouth, his sallow cheeks, his veiny forehead, the tuft of wet, blond curls licking his skin.

It is the happiest moment of Draco's life. It is the beginning of the worst.

++

There is a secret that he knows. It is liquid and silvery, slippery between his fingers, like ice against his skin, prickling all the sensory receptors that go straight to his brain. Like walking into a snowstorm or the time he hid in the icebox until his lips were blue. He likes it, imagines it could be his friend if it were more tangible, if he could just form it into something corporeal, if it wasn't just liquid and stupid and nothingness held together by magic.

It is a stream of consciousness. It is memory. It is not his, but he takes it greedily.

Scorpius sees the things he shouldn't, the things his father locked in the cabinet in the study at the end of the dark hall in small tubes. They are labeled, though— _June, 1997, August 1997, March 1998_ , and _May, 1998_ —as if his father wants someone to find them, to know his pain, his horror, the things he had to do to become a man in that ancient world that Scorpius does not understand.

The snake rears back and snaps, its massive throat closing up around a woman's lifeless head. Her hair sticks out between the snake's teeth and then disappears as it begins to digest her whole. The shape of her body is embossed on the snake's skin. Scorpius can even see her fingernails, her toes, her twisted arms and all the places in between. Beside him, his father, a small boy with black circles under his eyes, vomits under the table.

Then there is a man he knows as Severus Snape simmering in black and ghosting into a large bedroom. It is Scorpius' bedroom but it is not; it is years ago and so it is his father's. Snape holds out his wand and throws something at Draco's feet—Scorpius looks down, sees it is a house-elf, pathetically apologising and wringing its small hands. _Do it_ , Snape says, and Scorpius sees his father's shaking hand as he points his wand at the creature and says, without a hint of feeling, _Crucio_. Snape rounds him, watches him, his robes like bat's wings and dark shadows, his lips snarling _like you mean it, Draco, you stupid boy, like you mean it, like your family's lives depend on you learning this for the Dark Lord, do it_. His father tries again. This time, the house-elf screams and screams and screams, its eyes bugged out and tongue lolling. The look on his father's face destroys him.

Then there is a dark, dark room, where a mad-haired woman stands with a wand. _Draco_ she calls to him, sweetly, and then her claws are everywhere, sinking into his skin and dragging away his flesh, leaving red trails behind, which she kisses with her red, red lips and laps with her red, red tongue. He sees his father standing still, unmoving, his wand dropped at his feet and his body willowy and hollow. The look in his eyes as he stares ahead is blank and dead and vacant. The woman touches him, caresses his father's body and Draco whispers, _Don't_ , but his voice is so distant and shattered with regret. _Please._ There is a flash and his father is buried into a young man's body, thrusting wildly, the woman standing to his side and petting his hair with fond affection, whispering _Draco, Draco, Draco_ in sounds that echo and fade and ache.

Then, he sees a large, grumpy-looking boy with his wand flailing, a smug, stupid look on his face. He sees his father's horror, his father's grief, his father's hand outstretched through the fire and soot and smoke, all the terrible expressions that flicker in the loss of a boy who did not know what he was doing. He sees his father cry, sob, puke, sees him at the funeral home laying over the casket and causing a scene, Grandfather pulling him back with a snarl about dignity in the face of adversary.

Scorpius pulls away from the Pensieve with a gasp and falls to his knees. The memories spill out and seep into the floorboards, lost and gone forever.

His father finds him there, with the carpets pulled up and his fingers bloody from trying to retrieve the liquid that has been lost in the wood. Scorpius has managed to rip apart the floor and there are splinters lodged under his fingernails. He is wavering somewhere between the past, the present, and the somewhere beyond, saying, _I'm sorry, I'm sorry_ without knowing what it means.

Above his father's face, he sees them all, the pale array of ghosts speaking to him through the darkness, pleading _tell him, Scorpius, tell him_ and screaming in his ears until there's only ringing left.

++

When Scorpius begins to talk, he says terrible things. His first words are not _Mum_ or _Dad_. He says _bad_ and _them_ and _please_ , strains the words into broken sentences that worry Astoria to the point of exhaustion. The Healers tell them not to worry, that it's just baby-talk nonsense, but there are times Draco knows it's more than that.

It is when Scorpius is four and he points behind Draco's shoulder and says, _Who are they, Daddy?_ , and the room is empty behind him. It is when Scorpius tells him one night that he has seen things in the gardens, that they come looking for him, that they say retribution must be sought, penance paid. Scorpius says it so seriously, says, _Daddy, they talk to me, but they're looking for you_ and it chills Draco to the bone.

By the time Scorpius is six, Draco cannot stand to be in the same room with his son. The boy is crazy, says things that no six year old should say, and throws tantrums in his sleep, waking at all hours screaming bloody murder and imprisoning Draco in a past he wishes he could forget. The ghosts are there, and he feels them, feels Crabbe's blistered hands on his shoulders and his aunt's tongue at the nape of his neck and Charity Burbage's cold breath on his arm and the house-elf's trembling touch at his fingertips and the Muggle boy he fucked for Bellatrix's enjoyment clawing at his sides.

When Draco walks in on his son and sees the bloody mess he has made—barely ten, his forehead bashed in against the wall and blood-marks dully thudded on the paint of a doorjamb—he cannot bear things to go on like this any longer. He Apparates to St. Mungo's, thrusting Scorpius at the Healers and begging them to fix him, his son, his beautiful son who is broken. Fix him and put the pieces back together how they should be, because Merlin knows Draco has tried and it's not working.

Draco knows he did this. He shook Scorpius. He shook his son and he made him this way.

Scorpius turns to look at him as he is dragged away into a private room. His eyes are black and pupils large. He says, _Potions won't make them go away_ , as he disappears into the hospital and Draco dissolves into hysterics by the front desk.

++

There is a secret that he knows. They lock it into white cabinets, pluck it from crystal goblets, force it down his throat in blue and pink pills, until he begins to salivate for it like a common mutt. The Healers have bells on their robes, the scratch of their quills as good as morphine to relax him.

The white rooms do not make his nightmares go away, but the potions do. The potions that taste like candy, the potions that wipe the spirits from the room, that make the voices fade into the background. Scorpius knows what they put in the potions—dark things, pebbles of sulfur and acid and the things that shadows are made of—but he begins to forget his trepidation. Why should he be upset, when he feels nothing?

He feels nothing as he stubs his toe and it bleeds and bleeds and bleeds into the fine white carpets of his hospital room. Scorpius stands very still and watches the blood blossom and fan through the fibres. He almost feels something at the sight, but then his brain is mute, so he just smiles. He tells the Healers it doesn't hurt as they sweep him away.

Before he knows it, he is home, and his father holds him close and for a moment, Scorpius thinks this must be death, because everything is white and bland and vague around him. And he feels nothing.

++

Draco's hair has been coming out in clumps since Scorpius was born, but for the past year, his hair loss has stilted. On the platform, he feels ill at odds with the situation—letting Scorpius attend school, it is more difficult than he could have imagined. The thought of letting him go, to any degree, wracks Draco. He is thankful to have Astoria by his side, her warm hand laced in his, her free hand guiding Scorpius through Platform 9 ¾ and towards the steaming train.

Scorpius is on potions for what the Healers call _psychological trauma_. Scorpius looks better, no longer says things about ghosts that aren't there, and he is as well-behaved a son as Draco could have ever hoped for. Scorpius eats his meals at the dinner table now, politely excuses himself for the loo, and is quiet and sensitive and beautiful. Even if Scorpius no longer smiles, Draco will trade that for some normalcy. He learned long ago that life requires a give and take. He must give this one thing for something greater.

Across the platform, he spies Harry Potter and his family. Draco nods to him, only because he has been caught staring. Potter probably thinks he is of interest to Draco, but Draco has forgotten him entirely. No, it is not Potter he stares at. It is the three children swarming around him, two beautiful boys and a lovely girl, all of them smiling and wild-haired and freckled and sun-kissed.

The envy floods him. The darkness seeps in between the cracks in his arteries, pumping through his veins, crawling into him in all the deepest parts. What would life be, it asks, if things had been so happy for him? If he had been a hero. If he hadn't failed.

Scorpius kisses him goodbye and Draco knows it is for the best but his fingers are like talons in his son's spine and it is Astoria who separates them.

"I love you," Draco says.

Scorpius looks at him and does not smile.

++

There is a secret that he knows. It is dark. It is morbid. It is in everyone he meets, crawling like a disease just beneath the surface of their thoughts and feelings, but he can't ever quite reach it.

It is mostly in one boy he meets on the train.

"Hi, I'm Al," the boy says.

Scorpius feels something. It hurts, almost, but it's there. He stares at Al for a while. "I'm Scorpius," he says, but he means _I want you to make me feel again_.

"That's a funny name."

"Is it?"

Al shrugs. "My full name is Albus Severus. I know a lot about stupid names."

There it is again. A feeling. Stirring. Deeply, darkly, its fingers at the peripherals of his brain, tingling. There is no realisation, just feeling. Strange and wonderful and blinding and it makes Scorpius twist in his seat and he wants it more and badly, so he sits close to Al and breathes him in. Like peppermint and green grass.

"Did you say Severus?" Scorpius asks. The name sizzles on his tongue, a memory, a skittered thought, a dream, a ghost, a hand reaching for him through the beyond.

There is a secret that he knows. He will remember it in time.


End file.
